Home comforts in a year of challenge
In many ways this past year has been our most challenging year in 27 years of business, but paradoxically it has also been the most rewarding — and we think it demonstrates the ethos of our business — dignity, independence and choice,” reflects Penina Koorlander-Stone (known as Penny to many of her clients), director of Care à la Carte.
The agency was set up on the anniversary of D-Day in 1994 by Penny and her husband Ralph (whom she met at a Chagall exhibition at the Royal Academy) and provides mainly live-in care in clients’ own homes.
During Covid, they took on no new clients until testing became available: “We shielded our ongoing loyal clientèle and carers,” says Penny, who regards her profession as a vocation. “The carers were amazing. They only went out for a walk, they didn’t take their breaks. They were like the frontline NHS staff.” Of the few carers who were not live-in, some changed to live-in care, while others walked to work, drove or were driven, to avoid the infection risks of public transport. Now all carers take weekly PCR tests and nearly all are doubly vaccinated.
Penny smiles as she relates how she and Ralph recently transported the PCR test kits personally to the clients’ houses. “Ralph and I delivered them all and did unannounced inspections. We felt like Amazon deliverymen!”
To look after people’s relatives is “a great privilege,” says Penny. “We try to look after them as if they were our own parents.”
Indeed, it was their own parents’ care needs which brought solicitor Penny and barrister Ralph into the care business.
When Penny was still in her early 20s, her father — a Jewish Welshman who had served with a Scottish regiment in the Second World War — developed gastric cancer and Penny postponed her masters at Oxford to care for him until his death. Not long after, her mother was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s — so Penny gave up her law career (she is also a linguist, able to converse with clients in French, German, Hebrew, Italian and Spanish) and became her mother’s carer, enabling her mother to live at home for 21 years after diagnosis. At the same time, Penny had become a mother herself. She now has three children and three grandchildren, to whom Penny reads stories every night, over Zoom as they live in Jerusalem. Jewish Care, she says, was a lifeline of support while she was looking after her mother.
Penny also subsequently cared for Ralph’s father (a Jewish Brigade sergeant major and veteran of El Alamein) and mother (a gifted linguist who had removed her yellow star and hidden her parents
throughout the war, in Belgium). Ralph’s grandparents had always lived in his parental home when he was growing up, so this caring set-up came naturally to them both.
Soon, other families were approaching Penny and Ralph to find carers and so Care à la Carte was born.
Research suggests that care at home prolongs life, says Penny. “The client has total choice — when they get up, what they eat, when they eat… And care at home is much better for mental health. The isolation was terrible for people who lived alone but clients and carers were shielding together.”
Care à la Carte clients are matched with carers according to their interests — from crosswords and bridge to Shabbat entertaining — so they can enjoy life together. The agency is CQC rated good overall and in every category. All the carers are DBS checked yearly (above the legal requirement) and all carers are fully and regularly
trained, including Covid-19 training.
Care à la Carte never has more than 50 clients at a time, to enable them to provide individual attention. Penny always personally carries out the home assessments for new clients, after which they can draw up a customised care plan and daily routine. This plan goes into great detail about the client’s background, ongoing health issues and interests and their daily routine and it is evident, as Penny gives some examples of what it might contain, how loving and respectful Care à la Carte is of each individual and their life.
“For example, they might like to be brought a cup of tea in bed but then have a sleep before being washed and dressed for breakfast, or maybe they can come down for breakfast themselves, with a little help…”
Relatives receive telephone calls or video calls with a weekly update from carers — or more frequently if needed, for instance if a person has not been well.
“Every client is interesting,” enthuses Penny. “A lot of them say ‘Oh, I haven’t had an interesting life’ but then it turns out that, for example, one of our earliest clients was actually one of the first female barristers in England… Among our clients we have artists, sculptors, academics, businesspeople, housewives — a very fascinating new one was a young female codebreaker at Bletchley Park.” And all thrive on the ability to retain their independence in their own home.
“There’s no place like home — we really believe it.”
We try to look after clients as if they were our own parents’